Belated
by Tabii
Summary: “You had all day to give me a present, and yet you wait until forty minutes to midnight to start? Ma cherie, procrastination will not serve you well when you begin l’universite." France talks to an author and muses about time. Please R&R. Birthday fic.


He looks over the young author's shoulder at the blank document.

"You had all day to give me a present, and yet you wait until forty minutes to midnight to _start_? _Ma cherie,_ procrastination will not serve you well when you begin _l'universite_. Have you even gotten your driver's license yet? Or a new job? Have you selected your college courses? All the ideal ones will be filled up if you do not go soon."

"_Merci__, Maman_," the girl hisses sarcastically as she pushes her new square glasses up the bridge of her nose, "I'm giving you a present, aren't I? Jeez…"

Francis holds back a chuckle. This girl may be _une fille americaine_, but she takes after Matthew more than Alfred.

There is silence as she begins typing, and the nation can hear the opening notes of _"La Vie Boheme"_ filter through the girl's neon yellow earbuds. He can sense that she is about .5 seconds away from snapping at him to stop reading over her shoulder, so Francis looks around her room. It's messy, and very…transitional. There are children's toys strewn about along with a teenager's magazines and an adult's knick-knacks. Graphic novels from Kiku share shelf space with Shakespeare's plays and _'The Little House on the Prairie'_. Among the clutter, he spots a sketchbook.

He quietly flips through the pages, finding mostly unfinished sketches of different people. Some of the pages are little more than circles and lines, as if the artist had an idea and then abandoned it. Francis can see the ghosts of so many erased lines, as if she could not bear the imperfections. He spots a sketch of Alfred in the "Naked Waiter" uniform that Arthur has popularized, but he is missing hands and feet still. The next couple of pages appear to be Gilbert with a very young girl, although there isn't enough detail to really say.

Finally, there is a mostly-colored picture. It is of a girl, and Francis cannot deny the resemblance to Arthur. He begins to enquire, and the girl looks up from her laptop. The nation can see that the first page is nearly ¾ full of text.

"Alexa, an OC. _Yes_, she is related to Arthur. _No,_ you're not getting anymore than that."

And she goes back to typing manically.

After a few more pages, there is a half-colored sketch of a very…euh…what was that word Kiku had for this type of drawing? Oh yes. _Chibi_. It is a half-colored chibi sketch of Gilbert, his trademark smirk nicely captured and the token chick on his shoulder.

The most recent sketch in the book makes Francis reel. It is fully-colored and it even has a background of blue sky and green grass. It is Matthew, his Matthew, standing tall and smiling, hands behind his head and his hair pulled back. Aside from the awkward length of the legs, it is a fairly good rendition of the northern nation. There is even a level of shading that was not apparent in the other colored pictures. Francis knows that this must have taken hours and hours to draw.

The girl looks up again.

"Oh, that's Matt's birthday present," she says, "I'd have uploaded it, by my scanner hates me."

"_Ma cherie_, you obviously spent much time on this. Why did you not afford me the same dedication? Why is it only after you've had all day and are suddenly guilt-ridden and full of sugar that you bother to try to give me a gift?"

The girl averts her eyes.

"I…I'm not used to working with you, okay?" she mumbles, blushing scarlet, "I can't draw you and I can't write you, like I can Matt or Alfred or Arthur."

Francis looks over at her. She _really is trying_ to give him a birthday present. He…suddenly feels very old in her presence (all over eighteen and a half years). Perhaps…this was why the nations stopped interacting with the general public like they once had- had stopped making friends and acquaintances with their people. Because…while nations live for centuries, and sometimes even millennia, their people only live for a handful of decades. Francis knows that this girl will be an adult with a family of her own before he needs to trim his stubble, that she will be a graying old lady before his hair so much as grew an inch. What is one birthday present compared to the few short years she has to go and be youthful?

"_Cherie_, get some rest. My birthday is not that important."

She sighs, her shoulders slumping. It is midnight now. The spell is undone, his birthday is over. The girl chews her lower lip.

"Come back tomorrow afternoon. It'll be belated, but I should have something for you. "

"_Mon chaton_, I told you—"

"Please?"

"D'accord."

He knocks on the girl's bedroom the next afternoon, after sweeping unnoticed through the rest of the house. There is a moan that vaguely sounds like "come in" and he enters.

There is a lump underneath the blankets of the bed that moves a little when he pokes it. A slender hand emerges from the pile of covers (a round blister on the third knuckle of the ring finger) and points to the computer-desk-turned-entertainment-center.

Francis picks up the pile of papers the hand seems to be pointing to and flips through them. Most of them are rough sketches, but they get the point across. They are all of him. When he was a child nation, crushing his vassal Arthur in a tight hug, when he rode into battle with Jeanne, when he flirted at the court of Versailles, when he discovered Matthew, and a couple of other less sentimental, but still enjoyable pictures.

He kneels by the bed and takes the now-limp hand in his.

"Merci," he murmurs against her knuckles, "Merci."

There is movement under the blankets. She is trying to remain composed at his sincere thanks and compliment.

"_Pas de quoi_," she croaks, peeking out from underneath the covers. Francis smiles and pulls them back over her head.

"_Dormis-tu_," he says gently before pressing one last kiss to the blister on her finger. He knows now that it is from the hours of her pencil chafing against her knuckle.

When he can hear her breathing even out again, he takes his leave, holding the drawings to his chest. He makes a mental note to tell the other countries to starts socializing with their people again. After all, it is the mortals- their children- who make them what they are, who remember their birthdays and give them life. And…perhaps it is worth the grief they feel when their people pass on, so long as the pass on their memories and their patriotism to the next generation.

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A/N: Birthday fic for France~! Yes, it's late. Only by about half an hour though. Um...please review. I think Ivan turned my plot bunnies for Francis into plot-bunny-stew and cozy plot-bunny slippers, so this is what I came up with. If anyone has any requests, please PM me...I NEED inspiration!


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